Sports & Recreation : Equestrian

Owning a piece of a racehorse is the easiest, least expensive--and safest-- way to participate in the Sport of Kings. The author offers a personal and practical primer on racehorse partnerships. more...

Price: $9.99

Horseriding is a dangerous sport, horses are valuable animals and owners and riders need to be aware of all the legal pitfalls. This volume is a user-friendly, easily accessible book which sets out the essentials and avoids unnecessary details. more...

Price: $45.00

Patrick Smithwick has written an unusually moving memoir about growing up in the hell-bent-for-leather world of Thoroughbred racing as the son of Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey A.P. “Paddy” Smithwick. Racing My Father is the story of a son working alongside his father throughout summer mornings, and then hopping in a “hot car,” windows up, heater blasting -- so his father can sweat off a few more pounds -- and driving his father to the track where the races will be held in the afternoon. Paddy Smithwick was a natural. He was a charismatic figure. He was the greatest steeplechase rider in America in the 1950s and ’60s, winning all the big races, leading the country in races won four times, dominating the sport with his style, ability, heart, and gentlemanly demeanor. Patrick Smithwick is also a natural. As a jockey, he won steeplechase races. As a writer, he’s won awards. There are hints of the innocence of Huck Finn as Smithwick starts off his account of serving his apprenticeship with his father. The innocence ends when his father is paralyzed in a bad fall. Yet, the youthful Smithwick helps his father work his way back into racing, and the father-son, trainer-rider team ends up in the winner’s circle at Saratoga Springs. Smithwick has recreated his own Yoknapatawpha County -- with its gritty backsides and polished clubhouses, its knotty characters and sleek racehorses. Racing My Father is not just another “horse” book. It is a fast-paced memoir ranking in the stakes race category with Russell Baker’s Growing Up, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood, and Beryl Markham’s West With the Night. Racing My Father is a breathtaking ride over hurdles, with a whipping and driving finish, that catapults the father-son team of Paddy and Patrick Smithwick back into the winner’s circle. more...

Price: $9.99

In 1910, when the town of Pendleton, Oregon, held its first large-scale rodeo, the Pendleton Round-Up, it introduced a new kind of rodeo queen - not a traveling cowgirl performer but a young, middle-class woman from its own town. This work examines the history, evolution, and significance of the community-sponsored rodeo queen. more...

Price: $29.95

Round Table was an everyman's horse. In an era when larger-than-life racehorses such as Native Dancer, Swaps, and Nashua became national heroes, Round Table quietly and steadily racked up victories. In Round Table: Thoroughbred Legends #16, longtime editor and writer John McEvoy tells the inspirational story of the horse who gave his all every time. In a career spanning four years, from 1956 to 1959, Round Table raced an amazing sixty-six times, winning forty-three races. He did everything asked of him: he traveled coast to coast, carried weight, stayed, sprinted. He was a Horse of the Year, a handicap champion, and a turf champion. Like a little machine, Round Table would not quit. Although a small, unassuming brown horse, Round Table was regally bred by Kentucky's famed Claiborne Farm. With the death of Claiborne founder A.B. Hancock Sr., Round Table was sold to help pay estate taxes, in essence saving the farm. Under his new owner, Travis M. Kerr, and trainer William Molter, Round Table came into his own, winning races left and right, on dirt or on turf. He is acknowledged as one of the greatest turf runners in the history of the sport. more...

Price: $9.99